Bad-tempered bullying bunch, the horned cows
Among the unhorsed. Feared, spoilt,
Cantankerous at the hay, at assemblies, at crowded
Yard operations. Knowing this horn-tips’ position
To a fraction, every other cow knowing it too.
Like their own tenderness. Horning of bellies, hair-
   tufting
Of horn-tips. Handy levers. But
Off with their horns.
So they all are in the yard - 
The pick of the bullies, churning each other
Like thick fish in a bucket, churning their mud.
One by one, into the cage of the crush: the needle,
A roar not like a cow - more like a tiger,
Blast of air down a cavern, and long, long
Beginning in pain and ending in terror - then the next.
The needle between the horn and the eye, so deep
Your gut squirms for the eyeball twisting
In its pink-white fastenings of tissue. This side and that.
Then the first one anesthetized, back in the crush.
The bulldog pincers in the septum, stretched full
   strength,
The horn levered right over, the chin pulled round
With the pincers, the mouth drooling, the eye
Like a live eye caught in a pan, like the eye of a fish
Imprisoned in air. Then the cheese cutter
Of braided wire, and stainless steel peg handles,
Aligned on the hair-bedded root of the horn, then
   leaning
Backward full weight, pull-punching backwards,
Left right left right and the blood leaks
Down over the cheekbone, the wire bites
And buzzes, the ammonia horn-burn smokes
And the cow groans, roars shapelessly, hurls
Its half-ton commotion in the tight cage. Our faces
Grimace like faces in the dentist’s chair. The horn
Rocks from its roots, the wire pulls through
The last hinge of hair, the horn is heavy and free,
And a water-pistol jet of blood
Rains over the one who holds it — a needle jet
From the white-rasped and bloody skull-crater. Then
   tweezers
Twiddle the artery nozzle, knotting it enough,
And purple antiseptic squirts of cuttlefish cloud over it.
Then the other side the same. We collect
A heap of horns. The floor of the crush
Is a trampled puddle of scarlet. The purple-crowned  
   cattle,
The bullies, with suddenly no horns to fear,
Start ramming and wrestling. Maybe their heads
Are still anesthetized. A new order
Among the hornless. The bitchy high-headed
Straight-back brindle, with her Spanish bull-trot,
And her head-shaking snorting advance and her crazy
   spirit,
Will have to get maternal. What she’s lost
In weapons, she’ll have to make up for in tits.
But they’ve all lost one third of their beauty.